Air Freshener Withdrawn From Ukraine After Complaints About Brand Colors

It doesn't take much these days for people to take offense to one thing or another. This time it's Ukrainians and a toilet freshener. What would offend them you might ask? The branding colors of the BrefDuo Stripes freshner. They're blue and yellow. The same color of their flag. And Sweden's. Though I don't see Swede's complaining.

Now you might think they would be royally pissed off had it been, say, a Russian company that manufactures the toilet freshner, but it's actually a German company, and enough Urkainians have complained that Henkel pulled it from Ukrainian shelves, and issued an apology on its Facebook Page:

First of all, we wish to stress again that we are sorry if people feel offended by the design of our new Bref Duo Stripes. The color blue, intended to stand for water and hygiene, and the yellow color for lemon scent are common for this type of products. However, we have carefully listened to the comments of our consumers in Ukraine as we listen to our consumers in all countries in which we operate and take their concerns very seriously. We respect our consumers' feelings and have therefore taken the appropriate steps to immediately discontinue the distribution of the product in its current color design. We have also cancelled the respective TV ad. We apologize for any irritation our product may have caused.

Now I thought this might be a joke (am not going to fall for anything bogus, again!), but there is a TV ad, and enough complaints on the Henkel FB page to warrant taking this seriously. There are even calls for boycott.

Sigh,

Source: RFE/RL